Forget
by oldstuff
Summary: Faced with her mother's disapproval since birth and before, Sarralyn turns from friends to boys to men in search of love, only to find it right where she started. One shot.


**Title:** Forget

**Word Count**: 672

**Rating:** PG-15

**Summary:**One shot.Faced with her mother's disapproval since birth and before, Sarralyn turns from friends to boys to men in search of love, only to find it right where she started.

**Author's Notes**: (NOTE: This story contains incest. If that squicks you, don't read it.) Otherwise,criticism and pretty much everything in between is appreciated.

Sarralyn doesn't like many boys.

It doesn't matter that at sixteen, there are plenty of fish in the sea--boys to love and mold to herself like clay. She knows them well enough to see how easily they are judged, how quickly they sway from reason. When her eyes are green instead of blue, when her hair is lighter one day than another—they ignore the promise of her large eyes, soft skin, and silky hair, the words her long, lean body seems to whisper under their shaking hands.

And then, they forget. They're too confused and frightened to make themselves remember.

But Sarralyn doesn't forget. Her father took in her arms when she was nine, the first time she had "an accident", and told her she was a special girl with special talents, and that he loved her. She savours those words, because she knows she will not hear them often.

Sometimes, some of the boys came close to it, close to that point where they might turn and admire the different colored eyes rather than fear them. But the moment passes, they remember themselves, and they whisper 'witch' whenever she passes, too young to recognize that other kind of power she has over them.

As painful as it feels at first, Sarralyn doesn't let herself forget, because she knows what forgetting can do. At nine, she's forgotten the art she knew as a baby, when her body was as malleable as quicksilver. But at nine, she knows she can learn it again.

So like a merchant examining their wares, she takes inventory of what she does have: the frightened glances boys give her, her father's loving expression as he tells her what she can do but never must, the flesh that could be like mercury once more. All this and more she takes into account. But unlike a merchant, she doesn't sell it.

She uses it.

Her mother taught her animal shapes at twelve—the only shapes she thinks are safe for a growing girl. Her father might have taught her more, but his wife's disapproval checks him. So Sarralyn learns by herself, practicing eye color and hair color in front of a mirror until there are no more "accidents".

When she knows she has control over herself, she goes further. Most people are meant to live the lives they are given, but Sarralyn has been given infinite lives to choose from. So she does, studying what makes each person—their habits, movements, lives.

The first actual person she imitates, though, is her mother.

Sarralyn might love her father, but she doesn't love her mother; her mother only teaches her about animals, and Sarralyn wants to know about people. At an early age, Sarralyn dismisses her mother as useless. But Sarralyn finds her early judgment is not entirely correct; her mother is more valuable than she thinks. Because it is the sight of her mother and father making love (an accident, she claimed, though she had only been curious)that tempers a new desire in her.

It takes a few weeks to learn how to maintain her virginity no matter how many times she does it, but it's a valuable lesson she doesn't regret. After that, it takes several months more to learn how to imitate her mother perfectly.

Still, it takes a year before the perfect excuse comes: griffins in the north that require Daine's presence so suddenly she has no opportunity to say goodbye to anyone but Sarralyn.

Sarralyn is no stranger to love and lust. Other men have touched her—never mind she always looks different—but she never feels anything. But when Numair runs his hands down the length of her bare body, she feels it in her very marrow. She doesn't mind that he thinks it is his wife, not his daughter, twisting beneath his hands. She doesn't care that when he cries out, it is her mother's name he calls, not hers. Sarralyn can forget things when she wants to.

She likes to think she gets it from her father. Because if he noticed the gleam of green eyes that night, he never mentions it.

_fin_


End file.
